Before the holiday which dare not speak its name commences, we
are visited by one that in some ways has retained its original
trappings. Thanksgiving Day, whose celebration predates the
formation of the United States government, has somehow managed to
survive secular attacks; though the idea of exactly who we are to
thank is getting a bit confused.
While President Bush in his Thanksgiving Day proclamation
states, “[W]e thank God for His blessings and ask Him to continue
to guide and watch over our Nation,” the Republican governor of my
state of Connecticut, Jodi Rell, proclaimed, “I urge all our
citizens to join me in expressing our deepest gratitude to those
who touch our lives everyday and in extending a healing hand of
hope to those who need it most.”
So, as a good and loyal Nutmegger, I will thank a few folks who
have touched my life in the past year. But in keeping with the
proper religious nature of the holiday, I’ll express my gratitude
to those who have done so in ways that speak to higher things.
My first bouquet of thanks goes to 6th Circuit Court of Appeals
Judge Richard Suhrheinrich, who, writing for the majority in the
ACLU v. Mercer County — where a display of the Ten
Commandments in a Kentucky courthouse was allowed to remain —
stated what most conservatives have been shouting for
years:
The ACLU makes repeated reference to “the separation of
church and state.” This extra-constitutional construct has grown
tiresome. The First Amendment does not demand a wall of separation
between church and state.
In anticipation of an appeal to the U.S. Supreme Court, and musing
on the mess it has made of the 1st Amendment, he went on to deliver
the judicial quote of the year: “Thus, we remain in Establishment
Clause purgatory.” The Wisdom of Solomon it seems, is alive and
well, at least in Kentucky.
Although it continues to take some odd political stances, the
U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops scored a bull’s-eye earlier
this year by fulfilling its most important role, which is to inform
the faith of American Catholics. In response to an odious,
disingenuous document released by 55 Catholic Democrats — in which
they contended that although their party supports abortion and gay
marriage, they are in accord with the Church on issues like the
death penalty, immigration, gun control and increasing the minimum
wage — the USCCB released this:
Above all, the common outcry, which is justly made on
behalf of human rights — for example, the right to health, to
home, to work, to family, to culture — is false and illusory if
the right to life, the most basic and fundamental right
and the condition for all other personal rights, is not defended
with maximum determination.
And while on the subject of the Catholic Church, here’s a shout-out
to its German shepherd, Pope Benedict XVI. His remarks on the
incompatibility of Islam and reason sparked a debate that had
heretofore gone unrealized. No less than a French philosophy
teacher, Robert Redeker (who remains in hiding for his life), was
inspired to
write:
In the opening up to others, specific to the West, a
secularization of Christianity appears, whose bottom line is
summarized as follows: the other person must always pass in front
of me. The Westerner, the heir to Christianity, is to be the one to
make his soul exposed. He runs the risk of passing himself off as
weak.
With the same ardor as Communism, Islam treats generosity,
broadmindedness, tolerance, gentleness, freedom of women and of
manners, democratic values, as signs of decadence. These are the
weaknesses that it seeks to exploit, by means of “useful idiots,”
those of good consciences imbued with fine sentiments, in order to
impose the Koranic order on the Western world itself.
And so we must always give thanks to the guardians of our Western
values, those who stand between us and the tyrannies that confront
us; our valiant troops serving around the globe. They are truly a
gift from God to the nation they serve and living proof that,
“Greater love hath no man than this, that he lay down his life for
his friends.”
On a personal note, I’d like to add my thanks to God for his
many blessings on me this year, which included traveling a bit of
our great country by steamboat to see his handiwork up close and
meditate on its beauty. And more importantly, after a trip to
Calcutta, India, a reaffirmation of the feelings of immense
gratitude to him and my grandparents for making me an American.
